The Problem with Solutions

The problem with solutions is that they are all temporary fixes. No problem has ever been permanently fixed.

Don’t think in the span of a year or ten years, or even a human lifetime. Think longer. What has been permanently fixed?

In the end, the “solutions” we come up with lead to more problems. We often hear that “No one could have predicted the new problems that would arise from implementing a given solution.” It’s true, except that there always seem to be some unforeseen issues that arise.

In a paradoxical sense, the unforeseeable is foreseeable. It’s almost certain that some negative effect will come out of resolving a problem. We just don’t know what it will be.

People sometimes ask me for help with their problems. I try to help, but my power is limited.

The issue is that for any solution I may give you to your problem, you will soon come back and tell me it didn’t work. You will need me to help modify the plan for you or help resolve new problems that have arisen due to fixing the prior ones.

You will also become reliant on someone else to resolve your problems for you. You will outsource your thinking and your being, looking for someone else to fix an unfixable problem, which is human life.

Human life, and what to do with this life, or how to fix any human issue, is an unfixable problem, as they all are. There is no permanent solution.

I believe a worthy path is to train the mind, to build it up to be able to handle a variety of situations, but even this does not offer a permanent solution to anything. The stronger your mind is, the more likely you will challenge yourself further and further, until you reach a wall. Then what?

Notice that people who have the “solutions” will continue to believe that they have them. When you don’t succeed or get the result you wanted, they will just say you didn’t apply the advice correctly. And that may be true. Perhaps you made some mistakes. But even if you apply all the advice correctly, eventually, it will not work. Give it time, and ultimately, you will find that advice disappointing. This is because we live in a changing reality.

The advice of a year ago is probably outdated already. And the advice everyone is following also loses its utility. For example, if a finance guru posts that you should invest in real estate right now, and his millions of followers read that advice and follow it, then the more people follow his advice, the more useless it will be. If everyone rushes to buy real estate, the prices will go up and up, making it a bad investment.

For the next piece of advice you receive, imagine if the whole world took that advice and realize that everything would collapse overnight if that happened. Then understand the futility of advice and the futility of “solutions.”

So when you realize that there is no solution to chase, what do you do then? You probably look for the solutions anyway, right? This is the human way. We won’t sit by and leave a problem alone. If a neighbor comes to me with a broken chair, I may help him fix it. But what if I make a mistake because I am not a professional, then the chair breaks under him, and he hurts his back. Then he goes to the chiropractor, which fixes his back and accidentally causes problems with his neck.

Then maybe he gets tired of the new problems caused by fixing the old ones, and he decides to live with his neck issues. In time, perhaps his neck gets better on its own.

You may say this is a pessimistic view that problems have no solutions. Maybe it is. Or perhaps it’s realistic. We are obsessed with problems and solutions. If someone gives me a problem, I usually know what to do – even if the thing to do is to ask another expert. But all of that problem-solving keeps us spinning our wheels, running in circles.

Today’s generation hopes to solve today’s problems and waits for the next generation to solve the new problems (unforeseeable ones) this generation will cause. This continues until the latest generation faces the current problems on top of problems that all the prior generations caused along the way.

At some point, there are too many problems to deal with.

Everyone that I know is a believer. Whether religious or not, they are believers. They believe in solutions. They think that the solution to the problem will fix something.

But the question isn’t really if the “solution” will work. It’s actually: when will it fail?

Consider that the “Solution” you have found may actually be the biggest problem of your life.

For example, someone prone to stress will resolve one stressor, only to have another one arise. They will find a technique that works to resolve the stress until it no longer works. They will remove themselves from a stressful situation, only to run into another one with new kinds of stresses. Stress is just used as an example here, but the problem could be anything. Given time, the solutions fail, and we chase more and more solutions.

The problem with solutions is that we become fixated on resolving one particular issue, forgetting about the larger context. Any fool can fix a specific problem and create a hundred new ones in the process. And this is what we tend to do.

Humans are masterful problem-solvers but even more skillful at creating problems.

The real problem is that we are conditioned to expect solutions all around us. We expect someone to give us an action plan to resolve everything rather than using the power of the mind. We want rote, formulaic solutions to a dynamic world that doesn’t care about our procedures.

When I talk to people in customer service and come to them with a problem, I find them behaving like robots. I get responses like “That’s not how we were trained,” “This has never happened before,” and “No one has ever asked.” They might as well say “Does not compute,” as perhaps a robot would.

The problem with solutions is that we only tend to have them for easy, direct problems and have forgotten how to seek them out on the challenging problems we face.

The challenging problems were unexpected, unpredictable, unforeseen. Yet, at the same time, it should be quite obvious that things that have never happened in the past sometimes do occur in the future. However, we behave as if that is an impossibility.

Our go-to solutions are designed to handle problems that have happened in the past, not new ones which may occur in the future. This is practical in the short run but leaves us with calamity in the long run.

However, trying to resolve the problems that have never happened and may never happen can also be a loser’s game. You can spend all your life preparing to resolve a perceived problem that may never happen. So that is not the solution either.

I am not saying we should be happy doing nothing, allowing problems to build up, and taking no action to resolve them. I am not saying we should stay on the course of perpetually “solving” problems without actually fixing anything.

I am asking you to be mindful that just because you fixed ten problems in one day, this is nothing to be proud of. For resolving 10, you may have caused 100 new ones.

The story of humanity is that we are excellent at resolving short-term problems, only to create more of them. But if we think deeply, perhaps we have never solved a single problem permanently.

Ask yourself: What problem have human societies truly solved? And what problems have we created?

Consider this: Even if we fixed all human problems, that would still introduce a new problem. What do you do with human life when there is no apparent problem to focus on? Starvation, homelessness, illness, social needs, etc., have all been resolved in this theoretical utopia.

You may see where this is going, but perhaps this utopic vision is a dystopia because no one would have any purpose or any problem to work on. Society would quickly degenerate and crumble, and we would once again have an abundance of problems.

The state of having no problems ultimately results in a plethora of problems.

Again, those are problems with no solution. The solutions would only create more problems.

This post is not about recommending that you try to fix a problem or not do so, or seek help with a problem or not seek it. This is also not about apathy and giving up on everything.

It’s about increasing your awareness and understanding. Stop running in circles, chasing your tail.

The human mind sees a problem and jumps into trying to fix it. Maybe we need to take a step back and ask ourselves if the problem is worth attempting to fix. If doing nothing is just as effective at resolving a problem as doing something, then what are we wasting our time for?

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Some of my best work was published recently - Your Personal Truth: A Journey to Discover Your Truth, Become Your True Self, & Live Your Truth.

You can read the book on Amazon and other major retailers.